What does Obama know about ACORN fraud?

posted at 7:55 am on October 9, 2008 by Ed Morrissey

Investors Business Daily asks what Barack Obama knows about the epidemic of voter fraud in ACORN, and it’s not an unfair question. Not only has Obama publicly endorsed ACORN, he has paid them at least $800,000 for their services, an amount that he didn’t immediately disclose until pressed. ACORN has responded in kind, with their voter-registration efforts that have resulted in criminal investigations in more than a dozen states:

For starters, Obama paid ACORN, which has endorsed him for president, $800,000 to register new voters, payments his campaign failed to accurately report. (They were disguised in his FEC disclosure as payments to a front group called Citizen Services Inc. for “advance work.”)

What’s more, Obama worked as executive director of ACORN’s voter-registration arm, Project Vote, in 1992. Joined by two other community organizers on Chicago’s South Side, Obama conducted the voter-registration drive that helped elect Carol Moseley-Braun to the Senate that year.

The next year, 1993, Obama joined the civil-rights law firm Davis Miner Barnhill & Galland, where he sued the state of Illinois on behalf of ACORN to implement the federal “Motor Voter” law, which the GOP governor at the time refused to do. Then-Gov. Jim Edgar argued, presciently, that the Clinton law would invite voter fraud.

Obama downplays his ties to ACORN, and his campaign denies coordinating with ACORN to register voters.

For a man with a short track record, Barack Obama spends a lot of time disassociating himself from political partners. He spent most of the campaign misrepresenting his years-long working relationship with William Ayers, the unrepentant domestic terrorist of the Weather Underground and a man who still wants the overthrow of the capitalist economic system in the US. Now he wants to hide his work over two decades with an organization that should be looking at the business end of a federal RICO prosecution.

IBD outlines the scope of their criminal behavior, and Michelle gives us the details:

Missouri – Officials now have to sift through hundreds of bogus applications submitted last August.

Connecticut – A criminal investigation has been opened into ACORN fraud.

In Nevada, officials seemed surprised by the news that the Dallas Cowboys had moved en masse to the Silver State. The entire starting lineup registered to vote in Nevada, including Tony Romo, their quarterback. However, Secretary of State Ross Miller assured Nevadans that anyone posing as Terrell “TO” Owens would get a big NO if they tried to cast a vote.

Barack Obama helped run an ACORN unit, represented them as an attorney, and is now a client of ACORN. He needs to answer for their fraudulent tactics. His money helped fuel the organization, after all, and there is little doubt that they are working on his behalf. Their fraud intends to get him elected President. Will he denounce it, and demand prosecution? Or will he keep pretending that he doesn’t know them?

Update: The New York Post notes the nationwide pattern of fraud as well:

Let every vote count, is the Democratic Party’s mantra these days. That slogan might better be: Let every vote count as often as we need to win.

Such, at any rate, are the tactics of ACORN, Barack Obama’s favorite “community organizers,” and its Project Vote – of which, the Democratic presidential candidate has boasted, “I started working as the director . . . here in Chicago.”

ACORN has been implicated in voter-fraud schemes in 15 states – including Ohio, from where The Post’s Jeane MacIntosh reports today that a Board of Elections investigation has unearthed evidence of widespread voter fraud.

Hey, you know who else funds these fraudsters? You do. Congress sends them money every year, usually for housing assistance.